you're not on the list

Here's the open secret that is a never-ending joke in the social entrepreneurship community:

The "top tier" of social entrepreneurship sometimes feels like a fraternity. A bouncer-at-the-door, you're-not-on-the-list kind of thing.

People joke and whine about this all the time. Have you ever met someone who is an Ashoka, Skoll, AND Schwab fellow? I know a couple. And they deserve it - absolutely, and the "anointing" organisations have identified and supported inspiring and pioneering individuals who were the vanguard of a movement.

So here's your caveat: I am writing about the downside of this thing, in a spirit of constructive, not destructive, criticism. I am writing this because I love the social entrepreneurship movement, and most of its goals, and all of its good intentions, and I applaud its huge successes AND its inspirational entrepreneurs, and the organisations who have supported them and helped their ideas grow. And I feel about the movement the way writer Barbara Ehrenreich feels about America: "Dissent, rebellion, and all-around hell-raising remain the true duty of patriots."

Social change should not be a love-fest. We should be kicking ourselves and each other in the arse at every possible opportunity, because what we are trying to do is really, really important, so we had better be open to some criticism to improve the way we do it.

When The Campus Kitchens Project (www.campuskitchens.org), the organisation I was helping to build before moving to the UK, was a finalist for the 2005 Skoll award, a well-known guy in the field told me and my co-director, Karen Borchert, that if we got it, we would be in a "club" and from then on - we would have more credibility and connections and funding opportunities and management advice and capacity-building support, and that once we were in, boy, were we in.

That sounded absolutely great to us. I sort of pictured us at a cocktail party with Fruchterman and Yunus and Bill Strickland. We'd clink glasses and laugh about the old days when we couldn't break into that beautifully steep part of the J-curve because we were too busy chasing drip-feed grants to have time or resources to figure out how to break that cycle and really do some business. Ho-ho-ho, remember those days? Thank goodness we're up here at the top now. (Of course it's not actually like that, but a girl can dream.)

Then we didn't get the award. And you could hear the door shutting. The chasm between the anointed and the almost-anointed is staggering. I'm not saying these top-tier guys don't have resource constraints, don't face barriers, don't lose sleep at night - of course they do. And I'm not saying that I wouldn't wish that anointed status on Karen, who still works her ass off leading The Campus Kitchens Project - buddy, if you can get it, take it. I'm just saying that sometimes it feels like a rich-getting-richer scenario.

Now that I'm on the other side of the coin - providing support and strategy for social entrepreneurs through my business - I can say this without, I hope, it sounding like sour grapes. I meet people with great ideas and great models all the time, frustrated and running-out-of-time people, and sometimes it feels like the only way to get real traction and serious support is to get one of those coveted slots as a "fellow" or "genius" of some sort.

And, interestingly, it's not just an overt, awards-ceremony thing. There seem to be lots of ways to decide who's great and who's just good, and to make the distinction clear. Last week, I was talking with some fellow London-based social entrepreneurs about the "old guard" here in the UK. All of us expressed frustration that every meeting, panel, and conference is chaired and led by the Chers and Madonnas of the UK scene - the people who are so ubiquitous they have stopped needing last names. Liam, Adele, JohnByrd (which breaks the "Cher" rule but is one of those names everyone always says first-and-last together)... Nobody is trying to create the chasm between these guys and everyone else, it's just happening through repetition.

I don't have a solution, but I have a few opinions (big surprise):

1. We are focusing far too much on individuals. It is time for our aspirations and interests to grow up. People retire. They eventually die, for goodness sake. Focus and support for organsiations and the "macro" might not offer the same kind of cool stories as individuals do, but what that focus would create is field-building. If we are serious about changing the world, let's start celebrating organisations and best practices, which will outlive all of us. If we only support Johnny Appleseeds, but not those systems that manage and improve the orchards for generations to come, we're going to end up with...well, this metaphor has collapsed, but I hope you get my meaning.

2. We are being too risk-averse. What on earth is the point of doubling and tripling up on awards? To open the doors for the same person twice or three times? I am afraid we see it as less risky to "invest" in someone if the other guys at the top are doing it too. There's comfort in numbers. But this is not building a field. From where most of us sit, it looks like cherry-picking. And there are a lot of un-anointed social entrepreneurs out there that need strong management support and the kind of step-changing interventions those at "the top" can offer. Their "good" ideas can become "great" models too, with the right support and dissemination.

3. This field needs things that other sectors take for granted - things like M&A, for example. Or even just more collaboration and partnerships. How is that going to happen if the message we are sending is the individual entrepreneurs are the reason social change is happening? How is succession of leadership going to happen?

So here's my question: Why are we in this? Are we building a field here, or are we throwing a cocktail party?

JS.